On Friday, February 24, the 13^th NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) concluded its final session, thus effectively bringing the 13^th NPC’s five-year term to a close. As one of its last official acts, the outgoing NPCSC certified the elections of 2,977 delegates to the 14^th NPC, which will first convene on March 5. In a rare move, the NPCSC Delegate Credentials Committee disqualified three delegates-elect (from Hebei, Guangdong, and Chongqing, respectively)^[*] because they “lack the basic statutory requirements” for being a delegate, without further elaborating.

Continue reading “(Still) Mostly Han Men: Demographics of the 14th NPC” →

The 13^th NPC’s term ended in March 2023. For the demographics of the 14^th NPC (2023–), please see this post. This post does not reflect subsequent changes in the 13^th NPC’s membership.

UPDATE (Mar. 11, 2018): We have decided to make the data underlying this post available to the public. You can download the Excel file at this link. The first spreadsheet contains all the raw data automatically downloaded by a web crawler we designed; only the “年龄” (Age) column was added by us. Please also see below for a note on the discrepancies between these data and those provided by the Democratic Parties. The second spreadsheet contains data derived from the raw data. While we do not claim copyright to these data, we would appreciate if we are credited with making them available.

The 1^st Session of the 13^th NPC, the most consequential NPC session in recent memory, has entered its seventh day. The 2,980 delegates—roughly three-quarters of whom have never held such a position—are set to vote on the draft constitutional amendment in just a few hours. The amendment is widely expected to pass, of course. And all eyes are on the number of “no” votes and abstentions, if any. But who exactly are these delegates, allegedly “hand-picked” by President Xi Jinping and poised to reward him with indefinite tenure? We think now is as good a time as any to dissect the composition of this new NPC.

With the help of an old friend, we downloaded the publicly available information of all 2,980 delegates from the NPC’s website, including their gender, ethnicity, month of birth, jiguan [籍贯] (defined below), and political affiliation. (Unfortunately, information that used to be available, including educational background, is missing for the 13^th NPC delegates.) We then analyzed the data and made some interesting findings that we present below.

Continue reading “Demographics of the 13th NPC (Updated)” →